Sports Fact and Book Rec of the DAy 7/6/2007

Referring to Kevin Millar, feisty clubhouse agitator, dugout holler guy and mischievous flake of the 2004 world champion Boston Red Sox, manager Terry Francona admitted: "Kevin's great, but I wouldn't want twelve of him."

Birthdays:
Darrell Royal b. 1924
Brad Park b. 1948
Willie Randolph b. 1954
Ron Duguay b. 1957
Lance Johnson b. 1963


Goodbye, Columbus was Philip Roth’s first novel, and it inspired awe in literary circles. Newsweek deemed it “a masterpiece.” The New Yorker called it “superior, startling, incandescently alive.” It’s a simple love story of two Jewish kids from Jersey: he poor and from Newark, she wealthy and from Short Hills. But its wit and insights into class in America made it a timeless classic. Roth won the National Book Award for it, kicking off a long run of award winning including a National Book Critics Circle award, a Pulitzer Prize, and culminating in the 2001 Gold Medal for Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

GOODBYE, COLUMBUS: AND FIVE SHORT STORIES, by Philip Roth (1959; Vintage, 1994)